


Smoke

by orphan_account



Series: Rush Summer [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Closeted Character, F/F, Overhearing Conversation, Rush Valley, Trans Female Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 17:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morning routine. Her grandfather and experience have taught her three such routines. The first, her usual routine, which consists of establishing her location and the Emperor’s, ensuring their combined safety, binding her breasts and discreetly taking care of other personal functions, and attending to the Emperor's needs.</p>
<p>The second, if she ever awakens in an unfamiliar location, which consists of not panicking, finding the Emperor, and escaping to a safe location to reestablish the situation.</p>
<p>The third, if she ever awakens as a prisoner of war or other likely to be incapable of serving the Emperor further, which consists of ensuring the Emperor is not in the area, exhausting all other possibilities, and then locating the bead of cyanide concealed within a plate on her automail.</p>
<p>-------------------------------------------------------</p>
<p>Or, in which Winry and Paninya discuss how to assist a good friend of theirs, said good friend realises her supposed allies have been plotting about her behind her back, and Lan Fan discovers what may be a voyeurism fetish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke

**Author's Note:**

> Hello to any new readers, who should tab open the Rush Summer main page and start reading from the first work therein; otherwise, this will not make any sense. Seriously. I'm considering going back and making this one multi-chaptered work since I've been having issues. >.>''
> 
> For those curious, I do not agree with that Paninya, Winry, and Ling are doing with regards to Lan Fan. Discussing someone and attempt to 'fix' that person behind xir back is not a good thing. That's kind of the point of the fic. After some concerned anon messages, I wanted to make clear that I do not support this kind of "intervention" at all. Lan Fan's going to get better, but not like this.
> 
> Mild trigger warnings for discussion of transphobia and ineffectual methods of forcing someone out of the closet.
> 
> Thank you to all of my readers, again. I couldn't have done it without you.
> 
> I'm considering including some intermissions from the perspectives of other characters. What do you think?

Morning routine. Her grandfather and experience have taught her three such routines. The first, her usual routine, which consists of establishing her location and the Emperor’s, ensuring their combined safety, binding her breasts and discreetly taking care of other personal functions, cleaning and tending to her automail, warming up her muscles in a morning stretch and impromptu training session, awakening the Emperor if he has requested awakening, feeding the Emperor if he is awake or woken up, and attending to his other needs.

The second, if she ever awakens in an unfamiliar location, which consists of not panicking, slowly examining her surroundings, finding the Emperor, checking herself for injuries without movement or with if permitted, knocking individuals out if necessary, and escaping to a safe location to reestablish the situation.

The third, if she ever awakens as a prisoner of war or other likely to be incapable of serving the Emperor further, which consists of ensuring the Emperor is not in the area, exhausting all other possibilities, and then locating the bead of cyanide concealed within a plate on her automail.

Presently Lan Fan punches the post. Inhaling in time to hear heartbeat, she switches positions, sweeping one leg out low as though ducking, and punches the post again. The wood crackler; she feels it against her knuckles through the glove and the linen wrapped about her hand in a taut shield. The cloth compresses her muscles. She curls and uncurls her fingers, stretching each one separately in a rapid circular motion for thirty seconds, to retain their deftness. Next flexibility, of her limbs, of her torso, bending and contouring herself through the various positions until the blood flows warmly through her skin. Stamping her feet flat against the ground, she alternatively sprints and jogs between Rockbell Replacements & Repairs and a tree protruding from the horizon that she designates as her alternate point. At least this early in the morning, before the sun has risen and the ground steams beneath the pads of her feet, she regards Rush Valley as almost liveable.

By the time she returns to her temporary headquarters, the heat rolls sweat from her muscle. Droplets collect in uneasily moist pools at the base of her spine, within the hollow of her armpits, and around and between her toes. Removing her shoes at the door, Lan Fan cools her pads on the hardwood floor. Paninya and Winry’s _chi_ mingle from the makeshift half-kitchen carved from an unobtrusive corner in a converted closet from upstairs. Lan Fan steals into the workroom in the back. The Xingese schematics have been rolled up from the display and must lie, capped and hidden, somewhere in the room. Her automail remains affixed to the holding arm, metal clamps around her wrists and elbow. Subconsciously she massages the affected areas on her own left arm, her fingers rubbing against themselves.

Only two or three days  more. She can handle this. She simply needs to avoid absolutely everyone until the three days wind down, easy enough to do.

In the guest room directly overhead—though from the posters of bare-chested men Winry rapidly removed from the walls, she suspects said room to belong to the mechanic’s original mentor—Master Ling stirs. Lan Fan quits the workroom to ascend the stairs. Surreptitiously she passes the kitchen. What Winry and Paninya do, what Winry and Edward have agreed upon, would compromise exactly _none_ of the business she has in the household.

Moaning.

Without her permission her feet change course Towards the doorway. Hugging her back to the wall, she senses the shape of their blazing swirls of energy, the silver ribbon connecting them thick and pulsating with their emotion. She listens: A low groan. Through the sliver she can see, Winry perches on the edge of the counter, her knees wrapped around her girlfriend’s thighs, Paninya leaning over her as they kiss. Paninya’s right hand grips a fistful of blonde at the back of Winry’s head; the other finds purchase at Winry’s thigh, fingertips disappearing under the hem of the miniskirt. Winry’s mirrors hers: The left grips the curve of Paninya’s spine as though—Lan Fan searches for the term on the tip of her tongue—waltzing, the right continuously sliding along the countertop only to be replaced in a valiant effort not to fall. They pull apart with a sound wet enough to push Lan Fan’s gaze away. “See the one li’l trouble with havin’ guests is that the house gets real small real quick,” says Paninya.

Standing, the vassal has yet to take a step when Winry’s response gives her pause. “Mm. At least they _called_ , unlike a certain someone I know.”

“And hasn’t he been gettin’ better with the letters’n junk?”

Lan Fan lowers her head to focus her hearing. Reconnaissance. She’s doing reconnaissance work on the topic of Master LIng. “I suppose that’s true.” Winry _hrm_ s. “In fact, I’ve got to try to reply back to him. He has to keep sending me the addresses where he’ll pick up my letters if they make it there by the time he shows up. I know he hasn’t gotten them all . . .”

“Eh, that’s the post for ya. Barely ever works’n _Amestris_ and you ‘spect it to work halfway around the globe?”

A thump. A huff of breath, shoe squeak, rush of fabric. “Shit, see, you always know what to say _and_ what to do. A potent combination. I could almost, I dunno, fall in love with you or something if you keep that up.”

Paninya laughs. “Careful there, gracie. No need to knock me all over like eh?”

“Gracie. At least it’s better than _blondie_.”

“You’d say so, huh, blondie?”

Another huff, this one distinctly tinged with wrench-gripping irritation. “How about you get the couch for a week, Ninya?”

“Ling told you, didn’t he?” Beat. “Skinny-ass string bean bastard.” Lan Fan somehow keeps breathing with a tranquil stillness. “Anyway, ‘bout the letters, don’t flip out when you guys’re gonna have to stop those soon because of the distance, okay?”

“Fuck you.”

“Not in the kitchen, Win. When’s the surgery?”

“Huh?” says Winry.

“To get you two disconnected from the hips?”

The faint _fll_ of bare feet on hardwood. A skin-to-fabric punch, followed by the squeak of Paninya’s boots. No, not a punch, but a shove. “ _Fuck_ you.”

“Maybe after dinner.”

Winry’s timbre warps into a twisted version of itself, like a watercolour painting smudged and running with tears. “I’m sorry I’m worried, all right? I know _I’m_ fine, I know I could take over the entire world if I wanted to—” Underneath her words, Lan Fan hears a susurrus of soft, whispery sound. Winry’s _chi_ cringes and coils in on itself, a wounded animal straining to nuzzle the mortal gash in an unreachable injury, and the vassal edges one foot away. “—but Ed’s an idiot and he’s the kind of guy who c-could show up right in the middle of a church and start yellin’ about how stupid they all are for believing in God and then they’re all going to turn around and gang up on him and fuck I know I know. It’s why I asked you to come open the shop with me. I worry too much about you. I love you, you know that? And Al, but I don’t need to worry about him as much, because he’s got May and he’s got a head on his shoulders and then _Granny_. I should call her.” On the floor the shadows slide. First one, deliberately, and then the other, a rapid strike.

“Win. Winry. Stop.” A scuffling noise, bare heels and shoes mingling in with flesh-to-flesh slaps and the moist panting Lan Fan recognises as a desperate kiss. “Yeah, you should call her, but not right now. Calm down.”

Winry’s voice rings with a peculiar resigned glumness. “You act like I’m hysterical.” Against the floor the shadow slumps into the second shadow’s arms. Lan Fan lowers her eyelids. Happening to listen in proves a different task than purposefully watching.

“Maybe when I met ‘im Ed was like that. He’s grown up.” Paninya snickers. “At least in the mind. Not so much of the, y’know, body there.

“I can think of one another place.”

The women burst into laughter. Dialing up the phone, Winry inquires her grandmother of her health, asks about business in Resembool, explains that someone named Garfield or Garfiel or something of the sort yet to return from vacation, assures her the Ling and Lan Fan arrived safely—at this sudden mentioning, the vassal lifts herself slightly to balance on her bent legs and searches for her heart, which has vanished, hiding away perhaps between two of her ribs or somewhere behind her spine, concealed akin to one of her lethal weapons—and invites her to Rush Valley for a break. Paninya starts sniggering under her breath. Winry’s breaths quicken. Hurriedly she finishes her good-byes and replaces the phone. “Fuck you.”

“Tryin’ to do so. That’s the third time in like as many minutes; you okay there?”

“I’m fine. Sorry. You know how it is, loving all of these morons who keep running around the country and now the entire world. People who sit around all day are boring. I’m glad everyone’s on the move. But that doesn’t mean I can’t worry.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Lan Fan is fluent in the language of silence. She characterises them without necessarily meaning to, labels them unconsciously in her head. The silence in the early morning before a city has awoken and the few beings rising upon their roofs or yawning at street-corners share the camaraderie born of witnesses to a great event. The silence of a man between the first rattling, deflating breath taken just after a blade lodges into his lung and the screaming realisation of his pain. The silence of a fire gone out with the faint static of cooling ash a lullaby to the slumbering heat. The silence into which the women fall reminds her of a silence with which she has had little experience, the silence of two individuals with _chi_ still and rippling softly within one another, as if the world could disappear entirely and still the two would only notice the other. And yet, from what she understands, Winry would feel the same way if she were with Edward. Delegating the issue to potentially typical Amestrisian behaviour, Lan Fan draws her _chi_ inwards so as not to disturb the loving waves of Winry and Paninya’s.

She almost senses a smile on her mouth.

Winry’s _chi_ billows outwards a second before she speaks. “What should we do about the party?”

“About the assholes? I set Sky straight. Dunno what else to do.” A mild hesitation. “I don’t really think we should invade her space, you know? I gotta admit that I don’t really know what to do right at the sec’, but . . .” Her volume softens. “But running up to her and askin’ doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

Winry smashes her hand against the table. “Dammit. When Ling asked me to help, I didn’t think he meant _this_. I thought, I don’t know, that maybe she just needed some encouragement, some friendship. Maybe a little push in the case of her, um, her sexuality, like Ling mentioned.”

Lan Fan’s automail arm, up on display for the world to see. A thick, acrid bile rises in her throat; the insides of her stomach boil.

“Right, I figured that that was what you meant. I think he might be right, but I dunno if forcing the issue like this is the right—”

“Paninya. I’ve dealt with stubborn people before. Trust me, I’m engaged to the stubbornest idiot on the planet right now, and I’m dating the second.” A short laugh. “But I didn’t expect to have to deal with . . . with this. I mean, I don’t—”

“I don’t know if that’s what Ling meant, Winry.” A silence. This one she characterises as akin to the silence between two stallions grazing in the same plain only to scent a mare in heat. “He wouldn’t mentioned it. Y’know, sure, we could be dealin’ with those dipshit assholes who were tryin’ to fuck her up. I should go punch Skylar ‘gain, too, just in case. But if he didn’t say shit, then neither should you.”

Winry sighs. A shuffling of fabric, a stretching, pulling whisper. “I guess. Mm. You’re right: If I just walk up to her like that she’ll think I’m transphobic or something.” Skin on skin and a muffled sigh. “Don’t facepalm at me.”

“I’m not. Usually you’re one of the best at this: You helped _me_. But you’re gettin’ ahead of yourself. I know you like her. I know you want her to be all happy-like, to be your friend, ‘n’ y’know what? I fuckin’ agree. She deserves her fucking happy ending.” Paninya takes a breath. “This isn’t what she needs. She’s gotten a bit better. She talked to me, right, about Xing. And sacrifice. We’re workin’ through it, ‘n’ she needs you, too. She knows you better anyhow.”

The half-moan that rolls from Winry’s mouth breaks her voice. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot. Maybe you should take over the—”

“But this isn’t a fuckin’ _problem_. Her goddamn _problem_ is that she’s so wrapped up in these fucked up values of what she’s thinkin’ Xing represents, these fucked up values that the dumbasses drilled into her’n she took up believin’ ‘cause she was in love a damn hot piece of ass prince and she knew he’d take on a half-million wives’n she wanted out.” Paninya inspires. Lan Fan can hear Winry crying again, yet her _chi_ languishes not towards the self but in mercurial ribbons extending to her own. “Focus on that, dammit. Ling doesn’t even care if she ends up not likin’ him at all. He wants her to be okay first.”

“I never said that—no, shit, I’m making it about myself again. Fuck. _Fuck_ I’m a terrible friend.”

Paninya murmurs something Lan Fan doesn’t catch. “Win, sweetheart, I didn’t mean to yell. I’m sorry. I love you.”

“No, I deserve it. I love you too.” Their _chi_ settle once more, pooling around them in a lake of serendipity, and Lan Fan swills the bitter taste of invidia around her mouth to avoid the poison of

“Okay. Lan Fan. We need to get Ling to apologise for what he did. Dammit, I told him not to drink anything, that damn _idiot_ Emperor.”

“He’s going to apologise anyway,” says Paninya. “He told me that last night; he doesn’t want to be hungover for it. But just get her talkin’. Don’t push, okay?”

“Okay. I promise.”

For her part, Lan Fan has learned the rules of reconnaissance, and the one that vibrates through her from the base of her skull to her fingertips bellows out in her grandfather’s voice: _Never respond to the information until the mission is complete_. Detached. Disconnected. Not herself at all, merely a repository for information. Yet she would not feel more exposed if she streaked naked through the streets.

Winry’s _chi_ nears her abruptly, the mechanic striding hurriedly towards the open doorway. In a flash Lan Fan, leaping onto the balls of her feet, lunges for the stairwell, but at once she comprehends her utter failure.

“Lan Fan?” says Winry slowly, her _chi_ thrumming around her, the ribbon tugging her close. “Were you li . . . hell . . . did you hear all of _that_?”


End file.
